THE Hubble Space Telescope has unveiled an unusually young galaxy situated just a cosmic stone’s throw from the Milky Way, in a region where other galaxies are billions of years older.
Most galaxies formed more than 10 billion years ago. Those born later tend to be fashioned from recycled gas rich in metals that were forged by previous generations of stars. But astronomers Trinh Thuan of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and Yuri Izotov of the Main Astronomical Observatory in Kiev, Ukraine found the gas in the youngster, named I Zwicky 18, contains very little metal and is more…
